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Plain old CLR object
open-in-new
<h2 id="etymology">Etymology</h2> <p><i>Plain Old CLR Object</i> is a play on the term <i><a href="/facts/Plain_old_Java_object/sTUnd6MN">plain old Java object</a></i> from the <a href="/facts/Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edition/7AAStd35">Java EE</a> programming world, which was coined by <a href="/facts/Martin_Fowler_(software_engineer)/l8k3NRI1">Martin Fowler</a> in 2000.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> POCO is often expanded to <i>plain old <a href="/facts/C_Sharp_(programming_language)/UC2gxeyb">C#</a> object</i>, though POCOs can be created with any language targeting the CLR. An alternative acronym sometimes used is <i>plain old .NET object</i>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="benefits">Benefits</h2> <p>Some benefits of POCOs are: </p> <ul><li>allows a simple storage mechanism for data, and simplifies serialization and passing data through layers;</li> <li>goes hand-in-hand with <a href="/facts/Dependency_injection/Vp9LdwhU">dependency injection</a> and the repository pattern;</li> <li>minimised complexity and dependencies on other layers (higher layers only care about the POCOs, POCOs don't care about anything) which facilitates loose coupling;</li> <li>increases testability through simplification.</li></ul> <h2 id="see-also">See also</h2> <ul><li><a href="/facts/Plain_old_data_structure/10yefr1d">Plain old data structure</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Plain_old_Java_object/sTUnd6MN">Plain old Java object</a></li> <li><a href="/facts/Data_transfer_object/K7sRSD4n">Data transfer object</a></li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>See, for example, this docs.microsoft.com article: POCO Support in WCF <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/framework/wcf/samples/poco-support" target="_blank">https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/framework/wcf/samples/poco-support</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>See anecdote here: http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/POJO.html <a href="http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/POJO.html" target="_blank">http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/POJO.html</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>See, for example, a reference to PONO in this whitepaper: Spring.net Reference Documentation Archived 2011-07-24 at the Wayback Machine <a href="http://www.springframework.net/doc-latest/reference/pdf/spring-net-reference.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.springframework.net/doc-latest/reference/pdf/spring-net-reference.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>